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LONG BLOG

Hello again everyone.
Yes, again with a downer and again with the XboxOne.

As we all know the XboxOne did a 180 on their DRM policies, however some things are pretty vague and missing from the announcement.

Let me start with things that are clear.
Region locking is gone.
The fact that the XboxOne shuts down the console part of being a game console after not getting on the internet for more than 24 hours is gone.

That's all clear, now lets see what things are strange.

"An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games"
The problem with this is what exactly Microsoft considers "offline games". Titanfall is a pure multiplayer game, so that is certainly not an offline game.
But what about games with online components, such as competitive multiplayer? Even if you don't want to play the multiplayer part of the game it could be that that game will not be considered an offline game. This could mean that more and more games will have crappy tacked on multiplayer so that Microsoft can force us online.

Also that brings up another part of the problem here.
When Microsoft announced they would use the "infinite power of the cloud" to enhance the gaming experience, what could that mean?
Now that the mandatory internet is cut off, would that mean that the cloud was just a load of hot air since the games obviously didn't need it?
Or is the cloud power now being used to brand single player games as needing an online component to "access the cloud" and again making them not offline games again?

Second point:
No mention was made of Xbox Live. Would signing onto Xbox Live do something? Would that make the new Xbox into the mandatory online Xbox again? What limitations does connection to Xbox Live have?
There was no mention of this, so we don't know. Although we can probably assume the worst.

Third point:
Second hand games will work as they do today.
Today second hand games work with Online Passes in most cases.
Does Microsoft mean this? I wouldn't put it past them to pull this old joke again under a different name.

So yeah, it may not be the outcome you expected.
I hope I am wrong, but I kinda expect I will be proven right.
Thanks for reading.

Edit, got into an argument with Stephen Toulouse just now.
Here are the results:

About JenSevone of us since 8:23 PM on 03.03.2012

“I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!” Jean-Paul Sartre - Nausea

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